** spoiler alert **
Summary: This is the book that started the Civil War. Ok, not really, but this moving portrayal of the lives of slaves and slave owners had a significant impact upon its release in the 1950s

Why I Read This: For a book club.

Review: I love this book. I had only read it once before, and I will always remember it as the first book that I read that touched the depths of my soul. I was 11, and I remember sobbing on my loveseat while reading about Eva's death. I kept putting off reading it for my book club, not ready to engage the possibility that what changed my life at 11, might not live up to my memory of it at 27. But my fears were unfounded. I found myself not only profoundly moved by the story, but fell in love with the writing style. I kept posting arbitrary quotes to twitter, a few of which I will share below:

"There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears, are the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate and the distressed. Among such was the delicate woman who sits there by the lamp, dropping slow tears, while she prepares the memorials of her own lost one for the outcast wanderer."

"Ah, what said those eyes, that spoke so much of heaven? Earth was past, and earthly pain; but so solemn, so mysterious, was the triumphant brightness of that face, that it checked even the sobs of sorrow."

"They think it's nothing, what we suffer,--nothing, what our children suffer! It's all a small matter; yet I've walked the streets when it seemed as if I had misery enough in my one heart to sink the city. I've wished the houses would fall on me, or the stones sink under me. Yes! and, in the judgment day, I will stand up before God, a witness against those that have ruined me and my children, body and soul!"

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